Beauvoir, Jeff Davis' final home and now the Shrine of the Confederacy.

Dave beneath a live oak, originally twin-trunked, under which Jeff Davis sat and read.

Dave, sitting on the foundation of a Biloxi motel destroyed by Katrina; enjoying sunshine and a lack of human contact.

Dave, looking at the Albertosaurus at the Royal Ontario Museum. The Archelon is to the left (out of the picture) and at ceiling level.

The Archelon

I’m well into (about 60K) the rough draft of THE LEGIONS OF FIRE. This is the first book of the new fantasy series for Tor. When asked, I picked The Books of the Elements as the series title because I thought it sounded good and I sincerely hoped that it would fit the series as it developed. Now that I’m this far along, it seems to be fitting pretty well. 

Of course Fire is an easy element. It remains to be seen whether I’m going to be as happy about the title when I get to Air, but there’s always a chance that a giant asteroid will have struck the Earth before then. I’ll deal with problems as they arise.

LEGIONS is set in a place that’s very similar to the Roman Empire in about 30 AD. The capital city (where the action begins) is Carce, however, not Rome. The series is in no sense Alternate History: it’s about a place where the legends of our world may be real, and where the myths of other cultures impinge on the civilized folk of Carce.

The rough draft is moving along very nicely. It took a long time to create the outline (which meant creating the world); but with that done, the writing has been smoother than most of my books. As I said, the background is very similar to Rome, and I know a great deal about Roman history and culture.

Those of you who’ve been reading these newsletters for a while (let alone those who know me personally) know that there’s going to be a catch, however; and so there is: I’m afraid that people are going to find the lavish background details to be silly and boring, of interest only to specialized antiquarians like me. (There are other people like me, kinda, I’m sure; but not enough of us to build a writing career on.)

Furthermore, the novel has completely different feel from the Isles series and from anything else that I’ve written. There’s a lot of characterization, but the characters aren’t the sort of people I used in the Isles series. These are urban, not rural, folk, and individually as well their personalities have little in common with the characters of the Isles.)

So maybe folks are going to hate it. Maybe I’m doing it completely wrong. Maybe the giant asteroid won’t come in time to save me from the results of my failure.

I’d be a different person if I didn’t worry about that sort of thing. Perhaps I’d fail more often if I worried less–but it doesn’t matter: this is how I am.

THE GODS RETURN, the last volume in the Isles series, is out from Tor with yet another wonderful cover painting by Donato. The final three books of the series (the Crown of the Isles Trilogy) is an honest-to-goodness trilogy which will gain if you read the books consecutively.

Though each book is in most fashions self-standing, there are some plot threads which start in THE FORTRESS OF GLASS and are not resolved until the climax of RETURN. The people who wrote me in horror when they’d finished FORTRESS (you know who you are) will find the planned resolution. I personally find it satisfying, and I think most readers will agree. (Those who’ve commented to me about the whole trilogy are pleased.)

Tor released the second book of the Crown of the Isles, THE MIRROR OF WORLDS, in mass market at the beginning of November, just before they brought out the hardcover of RETURN. The Donato cover of this one is effective even in the smaller paperback format. It has wyverns, by the way, the heraldic animal of the Drakes of Ashe, my distant ancestors.

A friend commented to me after he’d picked up RETURN that I must feel relieved (to have completed the nine-book series). In fact I didn’t have much feeling about that at all. What relieved me was the fact that I’d finally begun writing LEGIONS.

Once a book is done, I move onto the next thing. Since I finished RETURN, I’ve written the RCN space opera, IN THE STORMY RED SKY, and begun the brand new fantasy series. The Isles series was, if not the farthest thing from my mind, at least well down the list.

But I am really proud of the Isles. I built the nine-book arc carefully and ended it both thoroughly and on a high note.

I mentioned IN THE STORMY RED SKY, which will be a Baen hardcover in May, 2009. Steve Hickman’s striking image is up at [http://david-drake.com/news.html]. When the cover is printed, it (like its RCN predecessor, WHEN THE TIDE RISES) will have Holotrans foil where the holographic image is in the painting. I’m very fortunate, both in my cover art and in the production which Baen and Tor have given my books.

Speaking of the SKY cover, I have advertising postcards for it. I haven’t done a postcard giveaway for a while, so: anybody who sends a request with their address label and a standard postcard stamp (27 cents as I write this) to Drake/PO Box 904/Chapel Hill, NC 27514, will get a signed postcard by return post. (I’m not sure where I’ll sign it, but somewhere.) The card has the cover image on one side and a list of the previous six books in the series.

I mentioned in the newsletterette last month that Audible has brought out the first six RCN (Leary/Mundy) space operas in MP3 audio format for download. There’s a possibility that Brilliance Audio (they’re both now part of Amazon) will bring out the series in physical form (MP3 CDs, I suppose), but they haven’t contacted me yet. I hope they do.

There are new pictures on the website  from the Walden West Festival and from World Fantasy Con. The former is in Sauk City, Wisconsin, and is dedicated to the life and work of August Derleth. Derleth gave me my start in writing by buying my first four stories, so I was really pleased to get the invitation to speak there.

I was struck by the fact that many–and I think most–of those attending had never met Derleth during his lifetime. He was a complex man–and yes, that means there was a bad side to him–but he helped many would-be writers. Some of us–Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, and me–have gone on to respectable writing careers as a result of his encouragement.

A large number of his fantasy stories will be reissued in four volumes on the centennial of his birth, February 24, 2009, by the August Derleth Society in conjunction with Arkham House, the small press which Derleth founded and which his daughter now operates. The volumes have new introductions. I did one, and for the heck of it I’m going to put it up.

I like doing little essays. We’ve started a new little corner of the website for my essays, musings and interviews. There’s not much there yet, but we’ll keep adding to it as we can.

Speaking of odd things on the website, I have completed a rough translation of the Pyramus and Thisbe section of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but the edit stalled halfway through because LEGIONS began absorbing all my time. Which is as it should be, but I really need to bring those star-crossed lovers to their miserable ends.

I’ve been chatting with my friend, Mark Van Name, about scenes in the book he’s writing. He’s decided to do them right instead of slanting them to what he thinks the potential readership will want.

I’m pleased, because that’s always been the choice I made. Oh, I don’t mean that I’ll never modify a bit of literature or history that I’m using as a template for my story. After Odysseus comes home, he slowly strangles all the female servants who have been sleeping with the suitors whom he and his allies have shot. That was a satisfying conclusion for an Iron Age Greek, but it wasn’t one that I personally liked or which I thought would be popular with modern readers of my CROSS THE STARS.

But many years ago I read a very good first novel which had a scene that bothered me. A couple was about to undertake a mission which carried a high risk of death for one or both of them. They spend the brief interval in an ecstasy of romantic love.

I remembered the day and night before I got on the first of a series of planes that would take me to Viet Nam. My wife and I were both under great stress. It was not a good time. When I met the author shortly after reading the book, I mentioned that to him. (I’m not going to name him here. It’s getting toward Christmas, and I don’t feel like making an instantly searchable attack on somebody I don’t dislike.)

He explained that initially he’d written a scene in which the couple ends up sitting on opposite sides of the room, each acting as though the other party didn’t exist. He’d decided that was a downer for readers, though, so he’d changed it to a scene of bliss and happiness.

He hadn’t been ignorant. He had deliberately concealed what he believed (correctly, in my experience) to be the reality of human nature, because he thought the book would sell better if he lied.

I was appalled, but I didn’t argue with him. I knew that I would never do what he had done (I make plenty of mistakes, but I don’t lie), but I figured he might be right.

And maybe he _was_ right. From the vantage of hindsight, though, I wonder if his attitude about ‘doing the commercial thing’ is at least part of the reason that someone with his great natural ability has had only a shadow of the career I would have predicted for him at the time. If you don’t respect the truth, you can’t respect your readers. They’ll pick up on that.

Mark is making a different decision. That pleases me a lot.

Merry Christmas, people. Try to be nice to others. I’m not as good at that as I should be, but I try–and you can too.

–Dave Drake

***
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The combined communities of Sauk City and Prairie du Sac are in no doubt who their most famous resident was.

Dave on Sunday afternoon talking about meeting Derleth in 1965.

The gathering Saturday afternoon in the cemetery where David Schweitzer gave an informative talk on the real people who were the characters in Derleth's books.

Dave at August Derleth's grave.

Dave at the entrance to Augie's Room of Leystra's Restaurant, where we had dinner Saturday night.

Folks frequently ask me how long it takes to write a novel. (People ask me a lot of questions that presumably seem simpler from the outside than they do to me.) The answer depends on a lot of things, in particular the length of the novel. (I average about a thousand words of rough draft per day; thus a novel of 135K words takes around two weeks longer to write than a similar book that was 120K words long.) 

But there are other factors which also affect the time I spend. If I’m working in an existing series, a lot of the basic groundwork is already in place before I start a new novel. In particular, I don’t have to create the main characters from the whole cloth. (The Hammer series may seem to be an exception because the viewpoint characters generally change from story to story. In my opinion, the Regiment itself is the real focus of a Hammer story.

What I’m getting to is the fact that after more than two months of work, I just finished the plot of the first book in the new Tor fantasy series… and I’ll tell the world! it was a job. This is the first new series I’ve started since 1995. I don’t think that in itself made the plotting harder; but because I know a _lot_ more about writing a complex series than I did when I plotted THE LORD OF THE ISLES, I’m working on aspects that I didn’t worry about in 1995. Those things rose up to bite me on the fanny later, but ignorance was bliss while I was creating the plot.

Well, that isn’t really true. I found plenty of things to worry about when I started plotting the Isles series. Experience has allowed me to trade them in for new and improved anxieties.

Still, I have a plot of 16,239 words for THE LEGIONS OF FIRE, first of the four Books of the Elements. I hope to start writing the novel in the near future (in the next couple days, probably). Starting every new novel scares me, and this one is scarier than most–

But after poring over reference books I’ve found the floor plan of the Senator’s house in which much of the action takes place, and I’ve borrowed a bit of business for the opening scene from Petronius and Valerius Maximus. My classical education has once again proved to be a solid anchor for my fiction.

Some months ago, a fellow from the military-themed blog Black Five TV did video interviews of me and my friend Mark Van Name on Mark’s back deck. (They’re part of a series that Baen Books is sponsoring.) As of this writing, two segments are up with more to come.

Watching them was an interesting experience. With me, what you see is what you get. I don’t regret that and I certainly don’t think I’m going to change–but when I’m in the audience, on the camera side of the interview, I’m struck by the fact that most people are less direct and less prone to express their real opinions.

I was also struck by the fact that I’m more likely to have a career in the NBA than I am in politics. (I repeat: I don’t regret that.)

In Newsletter 46, I mentioned that I was going to have to get cracking on the introductions for the audio downloads of the RCN space operas for Audible. It turned out that they’re planning to release the first six novels simultaneously, so I did the remaining five very abruptly after the newsletter went out.

Every time I do an introduction, I learn something new about the work and about myself. (Along the lines of, “Oh, _that’s_ why I did that.”) These were no exception. I don’t know if readers gain by them, but I sure do. I’ll pass on further information about the downloads when I have it.

I don’t ordinarily mention conventions, but I’m just back from Conjecture in San Diego. Not only was everybody nice to me, it was my first West Coast con ever. As a result, I signed a very large number of books for fans who’d either never met me or who hadn’t wanted to lug a trunkload of books to the Midwest or South.

So–if there’s anybody else in the West or Northwest who’s looking for a convention guest, keep me in mind. (I’m a cheap date.)

Among other things the con took me to the San Diego Maritime Museum, where I had a very good time. (There’s a picture of me and the con chair)

Visiting the vessel which was used as the _Surprise_ in the film _Master and Commander_ was unexpectedly moving. Jim Baen got me started reading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series (the direct genesis of my RCN space operas); he and I touched frequently on them when we chatted, right to the end. I kept thinking as I took pictures that I’d really like to burble to Jim about this… and I would.

Well, we burbled a lot to one another while we were able to. For those of you who haven’t learned the lesson the hard way, remember that you don’t have anybody forever. Deal with other people so that you won’t have regrets at the moment you realize that either you or the other fellow isn’t going to be around any more.

I don’t ordinarily mention (this seems to be the newsletter for exceptions) foreign publications, but the French edition of _Lord of the Isles_ is just beautiful. I don’t know that it’s a commercial cover (I don’t think it would be in the US market), but it’s perhaps the loveliest painting ever put on a book of mine. It’s up at http://david-drake.com/album.html.

I’ve mentioned in several newsletters that the paperback of _Balefires_ should be out soon. I no longer think that’s true. My suspicion (I haven’t been told this) is that Night Shade’s distributor is unwilling to handle mass market books from them. That’s a shame, but I’ve been in the business for far too long to argue with commercial realities.

If you see the hardcover–a dealer had three copies at Conjecture, but they didn’t last very long–you might consider buying it. The book is basically the autobiography of my early writing career. Before I had a writing career, come to think.

A cover comp of BELISARIUS 2: Storm at Noontide is up. The book, which collects the second pair of Belisarius novels by Eric Flint and me, will be out from Baen in March, 2009. (BELISARIUS 1 is out now.)

And though I’ve mentioned them before, the hc of THE GODS RETURN and the pb of THE MIRROR OF WORLDS, the final pair of novels in the Isles series, will be out from Tor in November, 2008–in other words, they’re almost in stores by the time you read this. I was pleased with the way I wrapped up the series.

Parenthetically, it’s irritated me over the years to have people tell me that the books of the Isles series are all the same. No, they’re not; the fact that the people making the comment don’t see the movement doesn’t change the fact that there _is_ movement. I hope that with the series complete, I’ll hear less of that.

Writers are always advised to show, not tell; but if you do that, you’ll be criticized by a lot of people who are blind but not mute. You still ought to do it: you should not change your writing style because loud-mouthed twits don’t understand what you’re doing.

I don’t have any new Latin translations up, though I’ve completed the Pyramus and Thisbe section of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ and have done a partial edit of it. Perhaps by the next newsletter I’ll have polished it to suit me.

Now I’m going to read over my plot outline one more time, in a vain hope that doing so will quell my dread. Only writing the book will do that, by replacing it with the different and equally familiar dread that I’ve fallen on my face in the execution.

But you know, I love what I do. I couldn’t tell you why, but that’s the honest truth. I hope that when it comes down to cases, you all can say the same about your lives.

–Dave Drake

***
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Dave and Stacey Helton beside the replica of the Surprise, Jack Aubrey's frigate.

Dave, who thought tanks were cramped, on the Soviet submarine b-39.

Baen Books sent me copies of WHEN THE TIDE RISES just before newsletter 43 came out, so by now it’s thoroughly on sale. This is the latest RCN (Leary/Mundy) space opera, and it’s a lovely production.

The splendid Steve Hickman painting is complemented by a transparent foil imprinted with a hologram, here showing the actual holographic display of the story. Steve and the cover designer, my friend Jennie Faries, championed the process, and Toni Weisskopf, the Baen publisher, gave it a shot. 

The result was a triumphant success. My bank manager was going through a Barnes and Noble with his four-year-old son. The boy stopped, entranced by the “really cool book!” His father realized he knew the author, which didn’t impress the four-year-old nearly as much as the hologram did.

So go to your local bookstore and look at the cover. Hold it to the light and play with the hologram. The on-line image, though great in itself, can’t give you the full effect.

I haven’t said anything about the contents, have I? A number of people have told me that TIDE is my best book. Personally, I’d say there were a couple scenes in the previous RCN novel, SOME GOLDEN HARBOR, that would be difficult to top. (HARBOR is available in pb, now. Feel free to make your own comparison test.)

It isn’t that a writer is necessarily a bad judge of his/her own work, but the writer is likely to care about different things than the normal reader does. My personal favorite of the Isles series was the fifth book, GODDESS OF THE ICE REALM, but folks who’ve written me would generally pick the third, SERVANT OF THE DRAGON. Again, I’d be delighted if y’all went out and bought the whole set to decide for yourselves. Mostly, though, I mention it to show that tastes differ, and the writer’s tastes are likely to differ from a reader’s.

There is going to be an Easton Press signed, leather-bound, edition of Tide, by the way. This is really very nice, but I’ll bet they won’t have a hologram inlay on the leather.

Speaking of the Isles fantasies, the ninth and final volume of the series, THE GODS RETURN, should be out from Tor in November, 2008. (I’ve gone over the copy-edited manuscript but I haven’t seen proofs yet.). I am amazingly lucky with my covers.

Simultaneously, THE MIRROR OF WORLDS, the eighth Isles fantasy, will be released in pb. The final three books of the series really are a trilogy, so the situations set up in THE FORTRESS OF GLASS are resolved in the two books following. The good guys win and things work out pretty reasonably well for the individuals. In odd ways.

Last I heard, the pb of BALEFIRES, my fantasy/horror collection from Night Shade, was to come out this spring. I figure I’ll learn it’s out when somebody sends me a copy to sign… which could be this afternoon or some time in late July. My bet would be July, but we’ll see. Update: I’ve just been told the pb will be out around May 15. Keep your fingers crossed.

I’m not disturbed, by the way. We at Carcosa (I was a partner) missed our first pub date by a year. Small press publishing is darned hard.

Returning to Baen for a moment, the pb of my (mostly military) collection OTHER TIMES THAN PEACE is scheduled for August, 2008. The cover was actually from Kurt Miller’s portfolio. Jim Baen had him modify the existing painting by adding the alien’s head. Doggone, I miss Jim.

The first hardcover Belisarius volume, THUNDER AT DAWN, is scheduled for September, 2008, release from Baen. I plotted the series as three novels. Eric Flint, who very skillfully wrote them, has a more diffuse style than mine. (Just about everybody has a more diffuse style than mine, which is a problem for me.) The three outlines became six (longish) novels.

Now Baen is bringing the series back in three fat hard hardcovers under the titles I came up with before I actually wrote the outlines. I find that rather funny.

The main thing that’s been happening since the most recent newsletter is, of course, that I’m working on the next RCN novel–IN THE STORMY RED SKY. I’m just under 60K in draft, which is more than far enough for me to be convinced that it’s all complete crap, boring and pointless.

Well, you’ve heard that before. And intellectually, I know that the craftsmanship of my work over the most recent ten years is higher than that of the decade before that–and the decade before that, right back to 1966. I don’t think SKY will embarrass me, but right now I’m just charging ahead in the hope that the guy who made the plan knew what he was doing. The technique didn’t work out real well in Viet Nam in 1970, but this time I wrote the plot.

Barry Malzberg’s sharply written, idiosyncratic view of SF, BREAKFAST IN THE RUINS, is up for a Hugo (for Best Related Book, I believe). It’s a brilliant work. If you’re eligible to vote for it, do so. (I’ll come back to that a little later on.)

Continuing on the subject of books which I’ve prodded Baen into doing, THE BOOKS OF THE WARS by Mark Geston will collect three novels (LORDS OF THE STARSHIP, OUT OF THE MOUTH OF THE DRAGON and THE SIEGE OF WONDER) which blew me away when I was starting to write.

I’ve been rereading them in preparation for doing an introduction to the omnibus, and they’ve amazed me all over again. Geston is a little younger than me, so LORDS was written when he was twenty. I’m not surprised that a twenty-year-old can be erudite (I was amazed at the erudition of my CODEX, written when I was about that age; it isn’t a good story, but it certainly was erudite). I _am_ surprised at Geston’s sophistication, though.

The omnibus is slotted for April, 2009. Look forward to it. Join me in amazement.

Mostly I’ve been working hard on SKY, but I do have another of Ovid’s lyrics up. Even if you’re not interested in urbane wit (these aren’t love poems in any real sense), take a look at the concluding images contrasting the deaths of a soldier or a merchant with that of a lover. Ovid is as good a craftsman as you’ll find, a writer from whom any other writer can learn.

There are also some pictures from (the first) Omegacon up. It was good chatting at length with Ben Bova, who bought three stories (including NATION WITHOUT WALLS) from me at ANALOG, and bought MEN LIKE US for OMNI. The folks running the con were nice people, but they would have to improve a great deal to be described as disorganized.

Maybe next year will be better. I hope any of you who attend will let me know.

I said I was going to talk more about the Hugos. There’s been discussion on Baen’s Bar about the fact that Baen Books gets shorted for awards though the books themselves are successful, and that this is unfair. If more Baen fans (and many of the Barflies are rabid Baen fans) would buy (at least) supporting memberships to Worldcon and vote, this would change.

I had to think about that. I agree in principle, and certainly I would like an award, but–and this is a big but–I don’t as a matter of faith believe that it matters. The books matter, the awards don’t.

I emphasize that this is faith with me, not reality: awards are a quick guide to the ignorant, for example to Hollywood types looking for properties to buy for large sums of money. In that commercial sense, it would be good to have awards.

In former years, awards could delude publishers into spending large sums of money on books which very few people would buy. I know writers whose books (in the early ’80s) sold about the same as (or a little less well than) mine did, but who were paid five times as much. That’s changed since publishing computerized. In the long term this worked to my advantage, since my books were commercial successes whereas theirs were disasters. The few of those cachet writers who are still writing are doing so for much lower advances than I now get. At the time it galled me, but not enough for me to go after awards.

Instead, I decided to believe that awards didn’t matter, knowing intellectually that my belief was in part false. It served me pretty well, though; and I can’t join the chorus on the Bar begging folks to go out and vote for Hugos.

Nonetheless I will mention that my collection BALEFIRES is eligible for a World Fantasy Award. The stories in it were largely written back when I thought that some day I might win an award but never dreamed of being a commercially successful writer. It therefore wouldn’t be completely inconsistent if I said that if BALEFIRES got on the WFA short list, I would be happy about the fact.

Pretty please?

–Dave Drake

***
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